Disney has released the Fox Searchlight film The Eyes of Tammy Faye on Blu-ray and standard DVD via its 20th Century Studios subsidiary. The film from director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) stars Jessica Chastain as the televangelist and Andrew Garfield as her husband, fellow televangelist Jim Bakker.

Chastain rose to prominence in the tragicomedy The Help ten years ago and hadn’t played another comic character until now. In the interim, we’ve suffered with her through Zero Dark Thirty, Molly’s Game, and other heavy dramas, but the actress is at her best in roles that call for dollops of comedy, and in The Eyes of Tammy Faye she again gets the chance to triumph in one.

The real Tammy Faye was a complex character, an inspiration to many while a source of ridicule to others in her halcyon years, a tragic figure after her downfall, and finally a beloved figure in her redemption. Chastain captures her in all her nuances, as does Garfield as her creepy husband. The two are among the year’s many actors in high profile portrayals of real-life characters. It’s possible that this year’s slate of Best Actress Oscar nominees might consist entirely of such performances with Chastain up against Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos, the previously reviewed Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in Respect, Lady Gaga as Patrizia Gucci in House of Gucci, and presumed front-runner Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer.

Spencer, releasing on Blu-ray and DVD on 1/11/2022 but available on Amazon Prime and pay-per-view now, is a fictional account of Diana’s last Christmas with the British royal family before her divorce from Prince Charles. I find the almost universal acclaim for Stewart’s performance baffling. To me, she’s not Diana but Stewart in a blonde wig for most of the film. She only comes close to the real princess near the end of the film when dresser Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) gives her a pep talk after which she leaves with her sons, taking them to a Kentucky Fried Chicken having rejected the gourmet food prepared by the queen’s chefs at Sandringham for three days.

In the race for Best Actor, the frontrunners seem to be King Richard’s Will Smith and tick, tick…BOOM!’s Andrew Garfield, both playing real-life characters as well.

Smith, a previous Oscar nominee for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness, is at his best as the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams in Warner Brothers’ King Richard, now in theatres and streaming on HBO Max prior to its Blu-ray and DVD release early next year.

tick, tick…BOOM! gives Chastain’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye co-star Garfield a strong chance at a second Oscar nomination following Hacksaw Ridge five years ago. Garfield plays Rent composer Jonathan Larson at 30, five years before his untimely death on the opening night of Rent off-Broadway. The film’s musical score may not be everyone’s cup of tea but Garfield’s struggling artist strikes a universal chord of recognition. tick, tick…BOOM!, which is currently streaming on Netflix, does not have a scheduled Blu-ray or DVD release.

Sound of Metal, which was previously available for home viewing only on Amazon Prime, has been released by Sony in a region free Blu-ray and DVD release from Australia. The Oscar winner for Best Film Editing and Best Sound, had also been nominated for Best Picture, Actor (Riz Ahmed), Supporting Actor (Paul Raci), and screenplay. The performances of Ahmed, who lost the Oscar to Anthony Hopkins in The Father, and Raci, who lost to Daniel Kaluuya in Judas and the Black Messiah, are extraordinary.

Criterion has released a new 4K restoration of Citizen Kane in honor of its 80th anniversary. Loaded with extras, the film has three commentaries accompanying the film on both the 4K version and on the first of its three Blu-ray discs. The second disc contains the rarely seen full-length 1991 BBC documentary The Complete Citizen Kane. The third contains numerous interviews with various film scholars. The legendary film, consistently hailed as one of the greatest ever made, was nominated for nine Oscars including Best Picture but won only one for Best Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and producer-director-star Orson Welles.

Complaints of the film on the first Blu-ray disc, but not the 4K disc, being too dark from the 30-minute mark to the end of the film, have resulted in Criterion offering to replace the disc after making buyers jump through hoops. To do so, they must either mail the disc to them or cut it in half to render it unplayable, take a picture, and e-mail the picture to them. This seems excessive. I have complained in the past to Twilight Time and Warner Archive about defective discs, and in both cases, they have mailed replacements without my having to return the discs.

Speaking of Warner Archive, they have just released two more upgrades of their classic films to Blu-ray.

1945’s The Thin Man Comes Home is the fifth of six Thin Man films to have gotten the upgrade since July 2019. William Powell and Myrna Loy return as Nick and Nora Charles in the MGM film with a first-rate supporting cast that includes Harry Davenport and Lucile Watson as Powell’s parents and Anne Revere as one of the suspects, a woman called Crazy Mary. This was one of three films in which the versatile Revere made indelible impressions in the beginning of the year. Another was The Keys of the Kingdom in which she and James Gleason played husband and wife Protestant missionaries in China who form a close bond with Catholic missionary Gregory Peck. The other was National Velvet for which she won an Oscar playing the wife of Donald Crisp and mother of Elizabeth Taylor and Angela Lansbury.

1951’s Lullaby of Broadway was a Warner Brothers musical designed to further the spectacular career of Doris Day and give Gene Nelson his first opportunity to play a leading man. It worked beautifully for Day, who got to sing such classic songs as “Just One of Those Things” and the title tune. Nelson, however, went back to playing second leads, most notably in the 1955 film version of Oklahoma!

The film has a notable supporting cast that includes S.Z. Sakall (In the Good Old Summertime), Florence Bates (Rebecca), and Gladys George (The Roaring Twenties). George is especially memorable as Day’s mother, a one-time star now reduced to singing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” in a seedy Greenwich Village bar.

This week’s new Blu-ray releases include Reds and Heaven Can Wait.